<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>the poetic condition by nasa</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529504">the poetic condition</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa'>nasa</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the poetic condition [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 06:28:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,473</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529504</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicky takes a poetry class at the local community center. His metaphors leave something to be desired.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the poetic condition [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160159</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>376</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the poetic condition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the following prompt from the kink meme:</p><p>Someone write Nicky struggling to find the poetic words to describe his love for Yusuf. Maybe he takes a poetry class, maybe he practices in secret at a local poetry meet up and Yusuf follows him in secret just to listen to his words! (maybe Nicky sucks at poetry but it’s still heartfelt!)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">In Barcelona, Nile decides she wants to learn to make pottery.</p><p class="p1">“We’re going to be here a while,” she points out when Joe raises an eyebrow. It’s true: Andy had broken her arm on their last mission, and now it’s bundled up in a bright-green cast, decorated on all sides by Joe and Nicky doodles, completely out of commission. It’ll take at least six weeks to heal, plus a few more before Andy gets any sort of dexterity back in her fingers - plenty of time to take a two-month pottery class at the local community center. The cost, of course, is not an issue.</p><p class="p1">“Well, maybe I want to do it, too,” Joe says. “It’s been a while since I’ve practiced making pots, I could use some brushing up on technique.”</p><p class="p1">But Nile shakes her head. “Uh, no thank you. You’d show me up at every turn, and the teacher will think they’ve found the next great potter or something, and then you’ll end up in the newspaper. I don’t need to be known as your sad, inexperienced sidekick.”</p><p class="p1">It probably isn’t true - Joe really <em>is </em>out of practice with pottery-making - but it makes him preen nonetheless. Nicky, for his part, just rolls his eyes. “I’m sure there’s other classes you can take,” he says. Joe counters with, “Well, aren’t you going to take something, then? If we’re all enriching our education,” which is how Joe ends up in a class for baby first aid, and Nicky ends up learning how to write poetry.</p><p class="p1">Andy, when she hears this, laughs. “It’s not funny,” Joe defends, as she keeps on cackling. Nicky, at the stove, smiles indulgently. “My Nicolo is a beautiful poet.”</p><p class="p1">“Do you remember,” Andy asks, still laughing, “That time in the thirteenth century when he compared your teeth to sheep?”</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry, he did what now?” Nile asks, at the same time Joe says, “That was a compliment, sheep are useful! And white!”</p><p class="p1">“Dinner,” Nicky says, and everyone rises from the table to fill their bowls. “I know my skill with words is lacking,” Nicky tells Andy as he ladles out her soup. “That is why I am taking the course.”</p><p class="p1">“You know, you don’t have to be good with words,” Joe says earnestly. “I’ll love you regardless.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky smiles, small but sincere. “Of course,” he agrees. “And you do not need to know infant first aid for me to love you, but it is a nice skill to have.”</p><p class="p1">Their classes start the next week. For the most part, it’s a nice way to spend the time. They’re not used to lingering in places so long -at least not as a team: in the past, it’s always been their practice to throw themselves straight into mission after mission, with only so much downtime as is necessary to keep them sane. The classes are a good way to keep some of the antsiness of staying in one place at bay.</p><p class="p1">Nile’s class is on Tuesdays and Thursdays at six p.m. The first few days, she arrives late for dinner, and eventually Nicky starts cooking later to accommodate her. They fall into a rhythm; soon, Nicky has the dinner coming out of the oven right when she arrives, clay streaked across her hands and arms and occasionally her cheeks, saying, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m not late!”</p><p class="p1">Joe’s class is on Mondays and Wednesdays at eight. It is, unfortunately, a little depressing. The class is mostly filled with terrified new parents and parents-to-be who are convinced the smallest mistake will kill their children, and they do everything with wide eyes and careful hands, holding their plastic babies like real children. The class involves a lot of partner work, and Joe finds himself, week after week, reassuring parents that they’re doing fine. “Kids are resilient,” he says, “They’ll be fine; you’re doing great.” These interactions inevitably end with parents asking if Joe himself has children, but they relax the parents, too, so he doesn’t muchmind.</p><p class="p1">And then there’s Nicky. His class is at two on Wednesdays and Fridays; he and Joe make a habit of going out to lunch beforehand, before Joe drops Nicky off at at the community center and goes to swim a few laps at the local pool while Nicky takes his class. Once, Joe asks if he can listen in, but Nicky only flushes and shakes his head. “It’s a private class, Joe,” he insists, “and you did not pay for it,” which is true, but not, Joe suspects, his real reason for saying no</p><p class="p1">Not that Joe minds. Nicky can have his secrets - and he seems to be enjoying the class. Nicky tells Joe most of the students are young people - “college students, maybe,” he guesses, though both he and Joe remain horrible at guessing ages, even after all these years. “They write about very sad subjects,” Nicky adds. “There are very few love poems in the mix. Unless they are about sex. I had no idea there were so many floral metaphors for the human vagina.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky, for his own part, has a journal in which he keeps his poems. He has told the others not to look at it under threat of death - or, for Andromache, threat of not getting her share of his cooking for several weeks. Joe knows he’s serious, so he obeys, and Nile and Andy thankfully do as well. It doesn’t mean Joe’s not curious - he’s blindly, blazingly curious about what Nicky has in there that he’s protecting so closely - but Nicky’s entitled to his privacy, of course, even from Joe.</p><p class="p1">Which is why Joe never intended to eavesdrop. He really didn’t. It was just - he and Nicky had gone out for lunch, sandwiches from a local deli that they ate sitting on the bonnet of the car, in the sunshine, and it had been so warm that Nicky had shucked his sweater and thrown it in the backseat. Except of course Nicky forgot to pick it up for his class, and Joe knows it’s cold inside the community center, with their overused central air. Joe only means to drop by Nicky’s classroom and give him his sweater. That’s all.</p><p class="p1">But when he gets there, the door is cracked open, and he can hear the familiar tenor of Nicky’s voice, reciting a poem. He stops without conscious thought. Nicky’s speaking Spanish, which - probably isn’t doing him any favors in the writing department, Joe thinks, though his voice sounds just as lovely in Spanish as it does all other languages. Nicky must just be finishing reciting his poems; Joe only catches a few lines.</p><p class="p1">“ - his lips like a pair of heavy leather boots, his hair like the rope that guides a horse’s bridle. I know him as well as I know the shape of my own organs lying on the floor in front of me. He is part of me.”</p><p class="p1">It’s - not the greatest poem in the world, objectively. The words don’t really flow together, and the images are kind of weird - especially the section about disembowelment, to someone who doesn’t know the context. But it’s also so clearly heartfelt, and Joe can hear the nerves in Nicky’s voice even if he’s clearly trying to hide them, and Joe just wants to charge in there and grab his husband and hug him so tight he cuts off his circulation.</p><p class="p1">There’s a long beat of silence. Joe presses his hand to his eyes and tries desperately not to cry. “Well,” someone says finally - the teacher, maybe? “That was certainly - you certainly included some similes in there. Which is good.”</p><p class="p1">Joe can imagine the way Nicky sags. “I know it is a bad poem.”</p><p class="p1">“No! No,” the teacher insists, “It is very sincere. I can tell you really love your - partner?”</p><p class="p1">“My husband,” Nicky says.</p><p class="p1">“Well, he’s very lucky to have someone who cares about him as much as you do,” the teacher says, and there’s a chorus of agreement as the rest of the class chimes in. “It’s just - perhaps, moving forward, you could try to use slightly less - violent imagery, I suppose? Some of the - well, certainly, it’s up to you, and creative freedom is important! And perhaps this is the emotion you meant to evoke. But some of the descriptions seem somewhat - harsh, I suppose. I mean, for instance, the metaphor of your organs - what were you hoping to get at with that?”</p><p class="p1">Nicky fumbles. Joe can imagine what he’s thinking - it isn’t a metaphor at all, but he can’t explain that. Eventually, he says, “I’m not quite sure.”</p><p class="p1">“Well, all right then. How about, for this week, you try to think through what you really <em>mean </em>by each of these metaphors? And then, maybe, next week, we can workshop as a class if there are other ways to maybe get the same point across which have, hmm, softer connotations?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Nicky agrees, but he sounds dejected. “Yes, that would be good. Thank you for your help.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course,” the teacher says, and Joe slips away before they can start on the next person’s poem so he can cry in the locked unisex bathroom. Afterwards, he splashes his face with cold water and goes back out to the car; Nicky emerges not ten minutes later, notebook clasped in his hand.</p><p class="p1">“How was class?” Joe asks, shifting the car into gear.</p><p class="p1">“Good,” Nicky says absently. “Do we need anything from the grocery store? I was thinking it might be nice to get some lamb, make koucha.”</p><p class="p1">“You don’t have to,” Joe says.</p><p class="p1">Nicky turns to him, brow furrowed. “Well, of course we don’t, but why wouldn’t we? You’re not considering vegetarianism again, are you?” Joe’s heart feels like it’s going to burst from his chest, but he settles for picking Nicky’s hand up from where it rests on the center console and pressing it to his lips.</p><p class="p1">“Lamb is good,” he says. “We’ll stop at the store.”</p><p class="p1">-</p><p class="p1">He waits until they’re in bed that night to say, “So my lips are like a pair of leather boots, hmm?”</p><p class="p1">Nicky pulls away from him. Joe is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, but he turns on his side, now, to face Nicky. Nicky’s eyes dart over Joe’s face. “I stopped by your class to drop off your sweater,” Joe admits. “The door was open and I - well.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky’s lips turn down. “You heard me.”</p><p class="p1">Joe nods. “It was very sweet.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky flushes, shaking his head. “No, it was horrible. Oh, Dio. I did not mean for you to hear that. It - even the teacher agrees. I cannot write poetry. I am a hopeless case.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s not what I heard,” Joe says, but Nicky just shakes his head again, not looking at him. “Hey, come on. Nicolo.”</p><p class="p1">“You write such good poetry for me,” Nicky sighs, gaze fixed somewhere over Joe’s shoulder. “Such beautiful words. I had hoped - well. I would never rival you, but I hoped I would not always be so useless.”</p><p class="p1">Joe’s first instinct is to tell Nicky that he is a lovely writer, that his words are beautiful - but that isn’t, objectively, true, and Nicky knows that. Instead, he considers his words. “You know,” he says finally, “what does it mean, anyway? To write good poetry? What really counts as good?” Joe raises his hand to cup Nicky’s cheek, thumb drifting over his cheekbone, the perpetual circles under his eyes. “I think it depends on the poetry, and what you are trying to do with it. If the goal of poetry is to write pretty things - if you want to make a nice collection of words - then, yes, maybe you do not write good poetry.” Joe’s fingers slide down to Nicky’s neck, stroking at the delicate flutter of his throat. “But that is not why you want to write poetry. You want to write poetry to express your love for me.”</p><p class="p1">He presses his forehead to Nicky’s. “Every time you get up to get a cloth after we make love - that is good poetry. Every time you clean my sword or stock my clip - that is good poetry. Every time you wake early to cook suhur, or comb my hair when I am tired, or hold me close at night - that is all good poetry, Nicolo. The best.” Joe brushes their noses together. “I may be biased. But in my mind, you are the greatest poet in the world.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky’s breath puffs unsteadily against Joe’s lips. Joe waits patiently for him to open his eyes. When he does, they are glimmering with tears. “How do you make words work so well for you?” he asks finally. He’s smiling. “I have been wrestling with them for weeks, I cannot make a single good sentence. And you just - come up with this, out of nowhere.”</p><p class="p1">“It does not come out of nowhere,” Joe argues. “It comes from you, my love for you. They are your words.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky presses his lips together, trying to be stern and failing. “Stop trying to make me cry.”</p><p class="p1">“I will when you do,” Joe says. “Did you know I sat in the bathroom for fifteen minutes after I heard your poem, bawling like a baby? The custodians must have thought I was dying.”</p><p class="p1">“You did not,” Nicky protests half-heartedly.</p><p class="p1">“I am surprised you didn’t see the tear tracks on my cheeks,” Joe says. “Like a baby, Nicolo. It was a very romantic poem.”</p><p class="p1">“The images were horrible, they said. Grotesque.”</p><p class="p1">“Nicky, my love,” Joe says, kissing Nicky on his salty lips. “I have killed you dozens of times. We have stood next to each other as we were skinned and gutted and flayed alive. Don’t you think we are a little grotesque? It is fitting.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky shakes his head but kisses him, once, then twice, then a third time, like he cannot bear to pull away. “Is that what I should tell my poetry teacher next week, hmm? That my lover and I have killed each other many times, so any violence in my imagery should be excused?”</p><p class="p1">Joe laughs. “No,” he says, “But tell her this: your husband loves your poems. He does not want them to change. Softer metaphors or no.”</p><p class="p1">The next week - the last of their respective courses - Nicky will do just that. Joe will meet him at the door after class, and Nicky will introduce him to Andrea, a kind-looking woman who shakes Yusuf’s hand with genuine enthusiasm. “You have a very devoted husband,” she will tell him, and Joe will smile and tug Nicky a little closer by his belt loops. That morning, he will have read Nicky’s journal - page after page of attempted poetry, all of it a little horrible, all of it made just for him. “Yes,” Joe will agree, smiling at her. “Aren’t I lucky?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>saw a prompt on the kinkmeme about nicky learning to write poetry and immediately wrote joe’s speech. and then I was like,,, fuck, I guess I have to write a fic for it now. two hours later, here we are.</p><p>couple notes: the ‘teeth like sheep’ line is a reference to this tumblr post (https://joeandnicky.tumblr.com/post/634401348131143680/12th-century-yusuf-well-educated-scholar-and);</p><p>I am led to believe by google that koucha is a tunisian lamb stew - if that is not the case, I apologize, and please let me know;</p><p>the original prompt on the kink meme can be found here (https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/7005.html?thread=2437725#cmt2437725); </p><p>title from a quote by robert graves: "to be a poet is a condition, not a profession";</p><p>and you can find me on tumblr as joeandnicky.tumblr.com!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>